


A Christmas Angel

by ColThKnighthold



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: AU, Christmas Angels, Christmas Fluff, F/F, Fantasy, Happy Ending, It's a Wonderful Life, M/M, Paranormal, Some angst, Suicidal Thoughts, and some drunkeness, some mention of homophobic behaviour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-13 00:36:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16882287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColThKnighthold/pseuds/ColThKnighthold
Summary: Every time a Christmas tree bell rings an angel gets his wings. This is the story of how one of them got his.





	A Christmas Angel

**Author's Note:**

> As the tags already gave away this story is on story The Greatest Gift by Philip van Doren Stern/ It’s a wonderful life (movie 1947).  
> And it has no bearing on real people lives. I have never been to the village mentioned in the story nor do I know the people mentioned it. I just borrowed them for the story.  
> English is not my first language and all mistake are my own, if you spot one please let me know in the comments.
> 
> Happy reading!

A Christmas Angel

 

‘You’re ready!’  
‘Really?’ Colin sounds a little apprehensive, like he thinks it’s a joke. He is not the smartest of angels. But it’s Christmas Eve and there are not many free. In fact the boy might be the only one left. Oh, well.  
‘Yeah, just look, look at that lonely man he thinks he has nothing to live for. It’s up to you to make him see that he still has a life to live,’ his supervisor tells him.

Colin stares at the man with a dark brown quiff, dressed in a dark overcoat standing at a bridge looking into icy water below.  
‘I know this place,’ he says looking at the country side surrounding the bridge. There hangs a sadness around the angel that his supervisor really doesn’t like.  
‘I miss her so much. Does she even know?’  
‘Who are you talking about, boy?’  
‘My mum. I miss my mum,’ Colin whispers.  
His supervisor lets out a sigh, he should have known the boy is still too hung up on his own humanity. Well its time he snaps out of it and starts to work and help others starting now.  
‘We all miss our mothers kid, and yes, you were born in England, all small villages look alike,’ his supervisor says slightly irritated by his charge, an angel second class who is yet to earn his wings, lack of enthusiasm for the opportunity he has been given. ‘Now look. You want to earn your wings don’t you? Well then! You’re here for him,’ he says pointing at the figure below, ‘you have to stop him from doing something stupid.’  
‘Alright then, who is he?’ Colin seems to be finally getting with it.  
‘He is called Nick, Nick Grimshaw, he is a young man, living in a small town, but with big dreams. From an early age, he wanted to get away from Church Hulme, travel the world, and accomplish big things as a fashion designer.’  
‘Why him, though?’  
‘Because every life is precious to our Lord.’

The first incident of Nick's life that Colin gets to see in preparation of his task is that on an August afternoon, a couple of days after Nick’s sixth birthday, Nick and his two siblings Jane and Andy, visit Potter’s Photo studio. On their way home they have accident as a drunk driver runs their car the road. Nicks brother and sister are seriously injured but six year old Nick is able to climb out of the car and goes for help and they all survive. 

The next is when an eighteen year old Nick is going off to uni. The mother is in tears when her youngest is also moving out. But things are not all bad as he gets to be a deejay on the univer-sity radio. He mostly does it for the local LHBTQ+ community of the university. 

Three years later, a twenty-one year old Nick drops out (without graduating) of his studies Communication and Media at Liverpool University and has to move back home. Where he goes to work for the local radio station of Cheshire East in Church Hulme itself, again mostly for the LHBTQ+ community. He also volunteers at local LHBTQ+ charity and he starts the tradition of a yearly Christmas Ball on Christmas Eve. It’s a huge success as he is able to tell about it on the radio. The event is held at the Charity/Radio building which was an old school building. 

There isn’t exactly a large gay community in Church Hulme. And when twenty five year old Nick deejay’s at the local disco, an event also organised by and for the LHBTQ+ community, he sees a sixteen year old Harry. The boy has a unruly mop of dark curls, big green eyes, adorable dimples and an atrocious fashion sense is there with some friends. He is slowly getting more and more drunk. His dancing skills also leave a lot to be desired but Nick could not have cared less. He wanted the boy right there and then. But he is a real gentleman when the boy needs rescuing for some other boys who are loitering about outside the venue. It takes them the best part of the year to really get together. They talk a lot about leaving Church Hulme and traveling the world. 

That same year Nick finds his aunt on Christmas Eve on the floor of her kitchen. In the hospital they tell the gathered family, she has suffered a mini-stroke. She never recovers fully but leaves him the shop when she goes to a nursing home. He put his plans on hold and stays to help her out. But that was then and now, he still works at the store. Has not been anywhere else.

Five years later, Colin sees a thirty year old Nick propos to Harry (who just turned twenty-one) and then marries him just after it becomes legal in the UK. They marry in Manchester with all the people of the charity present. In an over the top ceremony with Harry in a white suit with red roses printed all over it. Glittery red boots and silk shirt. Nick is dressed a red velvety suit. There are drag queens and a four tiered cake.

They also buy then the house they now live in, next to the church.

Present day and Nick is thirty- four and Grimshaws’ Greengrocers is doing very badly. A supermarket has opened up in the same street. Nick can't compete with their range of products or their low prices. He has to fire the only assistant he ever had, Louis a close friend of Harry’s, who had tried to change the shop with some help from Harry. He order delicatessen, such as dried fruits and better quality and locally made vegetables. Harry who loves to bake, he worked for a little while at the local bakery as a shop assistant, started to make petit-fours and other little treats. He really wants to do a patisserie course in Paris. But Nick doesn’t want or likes the changes. Even if his parents approve them and told him that his aunt would have loved that he made the shop his and that the business would be thriving. They, Harry and Nick, had many fights about it. Resulting in a bad mood in the house for days at the time. And then there is his volunteering at the local radio station and deejay-ing for the charity. Harry might even have said that he loved the radio station more than him. His technician Niall Horan, originally from Ireland, laughed at him and told him to home back to Harry. 

Nick does understand that Harry wants to go abroad but he really doesn’t like Harry’s sister Gemma. She left the village years ago and just showed up out of the blue, about a year ago, with her fiancée, a model. She keeps filling Harry’s head with foreign destinations Nick can’t possibly afford on the money he makes. He had seen the three of them leave the house with suitcases in their taxi when he came home for his lunch break. 

So now Nick has nowhere to go on Christmas Eve, for he really doesn’t want to come home to an empty house. And he really can’t stand going to his parents and having to explain why Harry left. And he doesn’t want to see his older siblings with their posh manners and expensive gifts, implying what a loser he really is. On top of that Nick ran his old van, which he also uses for his deejay equipment, against a tree just yesterday. It was snowing and he had been in a hurry. It’s damaged beyond repair and he can’t afford a new one. It was second hand already and it just scraped through the M.O.T. with some minor repairs still to be done. He is nearly crying when he runs through the snow to the bridge.

‘Now of you go. And good luck!’ Colin’s supervisor tells him before he sends him on his way.

❄ ❄ ❄ 

The town of Church Hulme in Cheshire, England glows with strung up Christmas lights and is covered with a blanket of snow. But Nick Grimshaw doesn’t see any of it, leaning over the railing of a stone bridge just outside of the town. He is staring down moodily at the icy cold black water of the river Dane below. The current eddies and swirls like liquid glass, and occasionally a bit of ice, detaches from the shore and will go gliding downstream to be swallowed up in the shadows under the bridge. Nick thinks about all the things that made him come here. His fight with Harry, his husband, this morning, before he had to open the shop. The customers that came in during his workday, their minds already on the celebrations of this evening and tomorrow. Something he won’t be doing. He hates his life. It was always going to happen, Harry leaving, but why does he have to pick today? He wishes he could leave the shop behind and follow Harry to where ever he wants to go, but somebody has to run it, since his aunt no longer could, but his aunt had no children and his dad her only other sibling has a bad back and his own job to content with. Besides Nicks brother Andy works in London and his elder sister Jane, is an accountant at a large firm up in Manchester. Which left Nick and since he dropped out of his study at Liverpool University he was talked into it. 

He leans still farther over the railing...

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ a quiet voice beside him says. Nick turns resentfully to a man, boy, he has never seen before. The lanky boy has a mop of blond curls and full pink lips and stares at him with big brown eyes.  
‘Wouldn’t do what?’ Nick asks sullenly.  
‘What you were thinking of doing!’  
‘How do you know what I was thinking?’  
‘Oh, we make it our business to know a lot of things,’ Colin says easily.

Nick wonders who that we is and what the boy’s business really is. He is a most remarkable person, the sort who would stand out in a crowd. Not unlike his Harry. Especially those bright brown eyes have a hypnotising effect. He is wearing a vintage well-worn bright green velvet suit and silk shirt with a bow, no overcoat, straight out of a 60’s shop. The kind of shop his boyfriend loves to roam in. He is carrying a brown satchel. It isn’t a doctor’s bag, it is too large for that and not the right shape. It is a salesman’s sample kit, Nick decides distastefully. The boy, for he can’t be no more than twenty years old, is probably some sort of peddler, the kind who would go around poking his sharp little nose into other people’s affairs.

‘Snow looks pretty, doesn’t it?’ Colin says, glancing appraisingly around. ‘It’s nice to have a white Christmas. They’re getting scarce these days, but then so are a lot of things.’ He turns to face Nick squarely. ‘You all right now?’  
‘Of course I’m all right. What made you think I wasn’t? I ….’ Nick falls silent before the stranger’s quiet gaze.  
Colin shakes his head. ‘You know you shouldn’t think things that especially not at Christmas time! You’ve got to consider Harry … your family and your friends too.’ 

Nick opens his mouth to ask how this boy, a stranger to him, knows his husbands name, but the boy anticipates him. ‘Don’t ask me how I know such things. It’s my business to know ’em. That’s why I came along this way tonight. Lucky for you I did otherwise you would have fallen in by now!’ He glances down at the dark water and shudders.  
‘Well, if you know so much about me,’ Nick says, ‘give me just one good reason why I should be alive.’  
The boy makes a strange chuckling sound, not unlike a laugh. ‘Come, come, it can’t be that bad. You’ve got your job at Grimshaws’. And Harry and your dogs. You’re healthy, alive and ….’  
‘And bloody sick of everything!’ Nick cries out. ‘I’m stuck here in this mud hole for life, doing the same dull work day after day. Other men are leading exciting lives, but I, well, I’m just a small-town shopkeeper. I never did anything really useful or interesting, and it looks as if I never will. I might just as well be dead. In fact, I wish I’d never been born!’

Colin looks at him in the growing darkness. ‘What was that you said?’ he asks softly.  
‘I said I wish I’d never been born,’ Nick repeats firmly. ‘And I mean it too!’  
The boy’s pink cheeks glow with excitement. ‘Well that’s wonderful! You’ve solved every-thing. I was afraid you were going to give me some trouble. But now you’ve got the solution yourself. You wish you’d never been born. Well, all right! OK then! You haven’t!’  
‘What do you mean?’ Nick growls.  
‘You haven’t been born. Just that. You haven’t been born. No one here knows you! You have no responsibilities, no job, no husband and no dogs! Well you don’t, of course, even have a mother, father or siblings for that matter. All your troubles are gone. Your wish, I am happy to say, has been granted … officially.’  
‘You’re nuts, you know that!’ Nick snorts and turns away.  
The stranger runs after him and catches him by the arm. ‘You’d better take this with you,’ he says, holding out his satchel. ‘It’ll open a lot of doors that might otherwise be slammed in your face.’  
‘What doors in whose face?’ Nick scoffs. ‘I know everybody in this town. And besides, I’d like to see anybody slam a door in my face.’  
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ the boy says soothingly. ‘But take this anyway. It can’t do any harm and it may help.’ He opens the satchel and displays a number of make-up items, lipstick, eyeshadow and even some perfume bottles. ‘You’d be surprised how these items can be as introduction - especially if you give them for free. I should know I was a Avon man myself for a little while.’ He picks a little bottle of perfume out of the bag. ‘Just say it’s a special gift for Christmas.’ 

He thrusts the satchel into Nick’s reluctant hands and begins: ‘When the lady of the house comes to the door you give her this and then talk fast. You say: “Good evening, Madam. I’m from Avon, and I want to present you with little bottle of perfume absolutely free - no obligation to purchase anything at all.” After that, of course, it’s easy. Now you try it.’ 

He forces the bottle into Nick’s hand. Nick promptly drops the bottle into the satchel and fumbled with the catch, finally closing it with an angry snap. ‘Oh, alright then!’

‘Well let’s look at the people you know what became of them now you’re not here. Come on!’ Colin turns and walks back towards the village. It is nearly dark and getting colder by minute and it’s starting to snow again. Nick shivers with cold and turns up his coat collar. The lights on the street and in the windows and houses glow softly. Church Hulme looks remarkably cheerful. After all, the place you grew up in is the one spot on earth where you can really feel comfortable with. Nick feels a sudden burst of affection for the small town.  
‘Here lives Mrs. Stuart, she must be at about eighty years old now. There are all sorts of ru-mours about her husband who ran off or … and about her son who also seemed to have disappeared, happened long before my time though,’ Nick informs the figure in front of him when they pass her house. ‘I remember the quarrel I had with her when my car scraped a piece of bark out of her big oak tree, yesterday. Really quite cross she was with me.’ 

Nick looks up at the vast spread of leafless branches towering over him in the darkness. ‘The tree must have been growing there since Medieval times.’  
‘Hmm,’ he hears the boy next to him. ‘Not quite.’  
‘You know I have never stopped to inspect the wound, for I was afraid to have Mrs Stuart catch me even looking at the tree.’ Now he steps out boldly into the roadway to examine the huge trunk. ‘Mrs Stuart must have repaired the scar or painted it over, somehow, for there is no sign of it.’ Nick flips his zippo open and bends down to look more closely. He straightens up with an odd, sinking feeling in his stomach. There isn’t any scar. The bark is smooth and undamaged.  
‘Uh, what happened? You know it would be nice if I knew what to call you.’  
‘It’s Colin and you know you haven’t been born,’ he says very matter-of-factly.

When they reach his shop, Nick sees immediately that something is amiss, the roll-downs shut-ters, he was sure he had put down before he left, are still up. And there is a battered old sign fastened on the door. Nick can just make out the words:

FOR RENT OR SALE  
Apply Geoff Payne  
Real Estate

‘Perhaps it is some kind of trick,’ Nick says more to himself than to Colin. Then Nick sees a pile of ancient leaves and tattered newspapers in the shop’s ordinarily immaculate doorway. And the windows look as though they haven’t been washed in years. A light is still burning across the street in Geoff Payne’s office. Nick dashes over and tears the door open. Liam, Geoff's son, looks up from his computer in surprise. ‘What can I do for you, sir?’ he says in the polite voice he reserves for potential customers.  
‘The shop, Grimshaws’,’ Nick says breathlessly. ‘What’s the matter with it?’  
‘The old greengrocers shop building?’ Liam turns around and looks out of the window. ‘Nothing that I can see. Wouldn’t like to rent or buy it, would you?’  
‘You mean, it’s out of business?’  
‘For a good eight years. Went under. Stranger ’round these parts, aren’t you?’  
Nick sags against the wall. ‘I was here some time ago,’ he says weakly. ‘The shop was all right then. I even knew the people who worked there.’  
‘You didn’t you know a woman by the name of Pippa Jones, did you?’  
‘Pippa Jones! Why, she …’ Nick is about to say that was his aunt. But now, of course, things are different. He would have to be careful. ‘No, I didn’t know her,’ he says slowly. ‘Not really, that is. I’d heard of her.’  
Nick feels the sinking feeling in his stomach again. ‘What happened to her?’ he demands hoarsely. He knows she left him the shop when she moved into the nursing home. ‘Well, she died Christmas Eve nine years ago,’ Liam says solemnly. ‘She is buried in St. Luke’s church-yard… ‘  
'Oh, and what happened to Harry and Gemma Styles?’ Nick asks softly almost afraid of the answer.  
‘Oh, Harry and his sister stayed in the village, they bought the house next to the church. They run a Bed and Breakfast out of it. If you’re looking for a place to stay… Hey! Where are you going?’

But Nick bolts out of the office, straight pass Colin who is watching through the window. He runs past the empty shop building. For a moment he thinks of going straight to Harry. Nick wonders whether they would have any dogs and what happened to Harry. Did he not marry somebody? Why a B&B? But he knows he can’t face Harry, not yet anyway. 

‘Where to now?’ Nick asks Colin who standing at his side again.  
The boy seems to ponder this for a minute or so pursing his lips. ‘What about your parents’ pub?’  
‘The Bull’s head? It’s closed on Christmas.’  
‘But they live next to it, your parents, don’t they?’

When they get to it, there are candles burning in the windows of the little weather-beaten house, and a Christmas wreath is hanging on the glass panel of the front door. He hears barking behind it.

‘Sherlock!’ Nick acclaims. ‘Sherlock, you old fool, stop that! Don’t you know me?’ When the door opens his father holds the dog, a German shepherd, which is still growling at him, by the collar while looks at Nick with some caution. He can see that his father doesn’t know him.  
‘Is the lady of the house in?’ he asks.  
His father waves toward the living-room. ‘Go on in,’ he says cordially. ‘I’ll chain this dog up. He can be mean with strangers.’

His mother Eileen, who stands in the hallway and obviously doesn’t recognize him either. Nick opens his sample kit and grabs the first bottle that comes to hand.  
‘Good evening, ma’am,’ he says politely. ‘I’m from Avon. We’re giving out a free sample of perfume. I thought you might like to have one. No obligation. No obligation at all...’ His voice falters.  
His mother smiles at his awkwardness. ‘We haven’t seen many Avon ladies or should I say Avon men round here in a long time. I suppose you’ll want to sell me something. I’m not real-ly sure I need any make-up or perfume.’  
‘No, I’m not selling anything,’ he assures her. ‘This is just - well, just a Christmas present from the company.’  
‘How nice,’ she says ‘You people never gave away such nice smelling perfume before,’ after she tried some on her wrist.  
‘This is a special offer,’ he says. His father finally enters the living room too. He must have brought the dog out back.  
‘Won’t you come in for a while and sit down?’ his mother says. ‘You must be tired walking so much.’  
‘Thank you, ma’am. I don’t mind if I do.’ He enters the little sitting room and put his bag down on the floor. The room looks different somehow, although he can’t figure out why.  
‘I used to know this town pretty well,’ he says to make conversation. ‘Knew some of the peo-ple of the village. I remember a Gemma Styles who opened a B&B with her little brother Har-ry.’  
‘You must know them.’  
‘Of course,’ his mother says. ‘We know Gemma and Harry well.’  
‘Do they have dogs?’ he tries to sound casually.  
‘No, why? I think they just have a cat.’  
Nick sighs audibly.  
‘My, you must be tired,’ Eileen says. ‘Perhaps I can get you a cuppa.’  
‘No, I’m, don’t bother,’ he says. ‘I’ll be having supper soon.’

He looks around the little sitting room, trying to find out why it looks different. He misses the photo of Harry and his wedding and he is sure there were many other pictures of him and his brother and sister. Then he sees the lonely framed photograph hanging over mantelpiece which had been taken on what would have been his 6th birthday. He remembers how they had gone to Potter’s studio to be photographed together. There was something strange about the picture though. It shows only two figures Jane and Andrew’s.  
‘Are that your children?’ he asks pointing towards the picture.  
His mother’s face clouds over. She nods but says nothing.  
‘I think I met them, too,’ Nick says hesitantly. ‘They are called Andy and Jane, aren’t they?’  
His mother turns away, making a strange choking noise in her throat. Her husband puts his arm clumsily around her shoulder. His voice, which was always mild and gentle, suddenly becomes harsh. ‘You couldn’t have met them,’ he says.  
‘They have been dead a long while. They died the day that picture was taken.’

‘Don’t you remember that August afternoon when Jane, Andy and you had visited Potter’s Photographic studio,’ he hears Colin whisper in his ear. ‘On your way home there had been an accident, a drunk driver had run your car, with Andy behind the wheel, off the road. Your brother and sister had been seriously injured but you were able to climb out of the car and go for help and they survived. But you don’t exist remember!’  
‘I’m sorry,’ Nick said miserably. ‘I guess I’d better go. And I wish you both a very Merry Christmas.’ There, he has put his foot in it again, wishing them a Merry Christmas when they were thinking about their dead children, he mutters to himself when walks to the door.

He wants desperately now to see Harry. He isn’t sure he can stand not being recognized by him, but he has to see him. 

For a while they walk silently through the snow when Nick suddenly stops in front of a house.  
‘Why are we stopping here?’ Colin asks.  
‘It’s the house of my former shop-assistant Louis.  
‘Oh, the one you had to let go?’  
‘Yeah, but I really didn’t want to.’  
There are lights on but when he looks through the window there is no Christmas tree. ‘That’s strange!’  
‘What is?’ Colin asks.  
‘No Christmas tree, no party but it’s his birthday too. It’s should be filled with people. He has six other siblings you know. Anyway he should be getting ready to go by now.’  
‘To go where?’  
‘Don’t be daft, the annual Christmas Party of LGBTQ + Community of Cheshire East.’  
‘But it is his birthday. Doesn’t he wants to celebrate it with his family?’  
‘The LGBTQ + Community is his family.’  
‘But he isn’t gay or anything is he?’  
‘No but he supports us. He is Harry’s best friend you know. If he hadn’t come to that disco that day I never would have met Harry. He always goes to our Christmas Party. He helps out with the last minute preparations and so on. He even met his girlfriend there and all. Who should also be here, come to think of it.’  
‘You weren’t here to start the tradition or to tell of it on the radio.’  
‘Suppose so, anyway let’s just go.”  
‘But why don’t you want to see him?’  
‘No, I really don’t,’ mutters and stalks off.

Then they stop in front of the radio station. It’s also dark.  
‘Why are there no lights on? Where is everybody? Niall should be there, at least. He always opens the door. After…’  
‘After what exactly? He has no show on the radio. You had. He was just a technician. A technician you hired. When the one last packed up and when to Australia, was it?’  
‘But …’  
‘But nothing, he was never hired. I don’t think he even lives here anymore. I guess he celebrates the holiday in Ireland,’ Colin states. 

Harry, he really has to see him. Right now. Nick starts running to the church.

The lights are on in the church, and the choir is making last-minute preparations for Christmas vespers. The organ has been practicing ‘Holy Night’ evening after evening until Nick had be-come thoroughly sick of it. But now the music almost tears his heart out. 

Nick stumbles blindly up the path to his own house. The lawn is untidy, and the flower bushes he had kept carefully trimmed are neglected and badly sprouted. When he knocks at the door there is a long silence. He misses his own dogs Pig and Stinky, for a minute he wonders where they are, but then he remembers his mother’s words. They only have a cat. Then Harry comes to the door. At the sight of him, Nicks voice almost fails him. His chocolate coloured curls, his tattoos the swallows, peeking from between the unbuttoned buttons of his dress shirt. His knitted vest loosely draped around his upper-body, his long legs wrapped in his favourite skinny jeans and a pair of festive woollen fuzzy socks on his feet. 

‘Merry Christmas, sir,’ he manages to say at last. When Nick enters the living room, unhappy as he is, he can’t help noticing with a secret grin that the too-high priced night-blue sofa they often had quarrelled over is there. Evidently Harry had gone through the same thing with his sister and had won the argument with her too. They also have a blue decorated Christmas tree, but this one is fake. And he longs for his own pine tree with only white ornaments.

His hands shake as he tries to open the satchel. One of the bottles is bigger and artfully de-signed in the form of a heart. It is obviously a bottle not intended to be given away, but Nick doesn’t care. He hands it to Harry. ‘This, this is a free perfume sample,’ he says.  
‘Really? It looks very expensive,’ Harry exclaims. ‘Are you sure, you’re giving it away free?’  
He nods solemnly. ‘Special introductory offer. It’s one way for the company to keep excess profits down and share them with its friends.’  
‘Really how strange. Surely you’re only work on commission. And it will have to come out of your own pocket.’  
‘Don’t be silly, anyway I want you to have it.’  
‘Well if you are sure.’  
Harry strokes the bottle gently with one of his hands. Nick can’t help but noticing that he is not wearing any of his rings. Harry takes a sniff and exclaims ‘That’s really a nice perfume. Thank you. I…’ 

Suddenly they hear footsteps outside, before somebody starts to fumble with some keys. Nick sees Harry glancing apprehensively at the door.

A heavy set man with a beer-belly comes in. Probably one of the lodgers of the B&B, Nick thinks. He stands for a moment in the doorway, clinging to the knob for support. His eyes are glazed and his face is very red. ‘Who’s this then Harry?’ he demands thickly.  
‘He’s an Avon man, you know make-up and things,’ Harry tries to explain. ‘He gave me this very nice bottle of perfume.’  
‘An Avon man!’ the man sneers. ‘Well, well, he must be queer then, make-up is for ladies,’ the man hiccups violently and lurches across the room to the sofa, where he sits down heavily. ‘And let him in. You must want a good dicking then. And where is that your no good sister of yours? I need her to ...!’  
Nick doesn’t like the way the guy is treating Harry or his absent sister. But when he goes to stand to confront the man over his behaviour he looks at Harry who looks despairingly back at Nick, his eyes are begging him to go. The man has lifted his feet up on the sofa and is sprawl-ing out on it, muttering unkind things about make-up and men and women who should do what they are supposed to do for. Nick goes to the door.  
Maybe this is all a bad dream from which he might eventually wake up. He wants to find Colin again and try to persuade him to cancel the whole deal.

He hurries to down the road and breaks into a run when he nears the river. Nick is relieved to see the boy standing on the bridge. ‘Colin, I’ve had enough,’ he gasped and throws the satch-el at him. ‘You have to get me out of this - you got me into it.’

Colin raises his eyebrows. ‘I’ve got you into it! I like that! You were granted your wish. You got everything you asked for. You’re the freest man on earth now. You have no ties. You can go anywhere - do anything. What more can you possibly want?’  
‘Change me back,’ Nick pleads. ‘Change me back, please. Not just for my sake but for others too. You don’t know what a mess this town is in. You don’t understand. I’ve got to get back. They need me here.’  
‘I understand right enough,’ the boy says slowly. ‘I just wanted to make sure you did. You had the greatest gift of all conferred upon you - the gift of life, of being a part of this world and taking a part in it. Yet you denied that gift.’

As Colin speaks, St. Luke’s bells sound, calling the townspeople to Christmas vespers.  
‘I’ve got to get back,’ Nick says desperately. ‘You can’t cut me off like this. Why, it’s mur-der!’  
‘Suicide rather, wouldn’t you say?’ Colin murmurs. ‘You brought it on yourself. However, since it’s Christmas Eve - well, anyway, close your eyes and keep listening to the bells.’ His voice sinks lower. ‘Keep listening to the bells...’

Nick does as he is told. He feels a cold, wet snowdrop touch his cheek - and then another and another. When he opens his eyes, the snow is falling fast, so fast that it obscures everything around him. The strange boy can’t be seen, but then neither can anything else. The snow is so thick that Nick has to grope for the bridge railing.

As he starts push himself toward Church Hulme again, Nick thinks he hears someone saying ‘Merry Christmas,’ but the bells are drowning out all other sounds, so he can’t be sure. When he reaches Mrs Stuart’s house he stops and walks out into the roadway, peering down anxiously at the base of the big oak tree. The scar is there, thank heaven! He touches the tree affectionately. He has to do something about the wound - get a tree surgeon or something. Anyway, he has evidently been changed back. He is himself again. 

Maybe it had been all a dream, or perhaps he had been hypnotized by the smooth-flowing black water. He has heard of such things.

At the corner of Knutsford Road and The Square he almost collides with a hurrying figure. It is Liam Payne, the real estate agent.  
‘Hello, Nick,’ Liam says cheerfully. ‘Late night, have you? I should think you’d want to be home early on Christmas Eve.’  
Nick draws a long breath. ‘I just wanted to see if the shop is all right. I’ve got to make sure the shutters are down.’  
‘Sure they are. I saw them down as I went past.’  
‘Let’s look, huh?’ Nick says, pulling at Liam’s sleeve. He wants the assurance of a witness. He drags the surprised real estate agent to the shop where he now can see for himself through the still falling snow, that indeed the shutters are down.  
‘I told you they were down,’ Liam says with some irritation.  
‘I had to make sure,’ Nick mumbles. ‘Thank you … and a Merry Christmas!’ 

Then he is off like a streak, running up the road. He is in a hurry to get home, but not in such a hurry that he can’t stop for a moment at his parents’ house. This time he goes ‘round the back, where he wrestles with Sherlock until the friendly German Shepard lies belly-up in the snow with delight. He hugs his startled brother and sister, who have come out to see what has got their family dog so excited, wishing them an almost hysterical Merry Christmas.  
Then he dashes across the sitting room to examine a certain photograph. He kisses his mother, jokes with his father, and is out of the house a few seconds later, stumbling and slipping on the newly fallen snow as he run on up the hill.

The church is bright with light, and the choir and the organ are going full tilt.

Nick flings open the door to his home and calls out at the top of his voice: ‘Harry! Where are you? Harry! Pig, Stinky where are you?’ When the dogs come barrelling down the hall.

‘Nick is that you? Why are you so late, love?’ His husband comes towards him, dressed for the party in red glittery suit, black glittery boots, there might even be glitter in his curls. ‘I thought I’d lost you. Oh Harry, darling, I thought I’d lost you!’

‘What’s on earth is the matter with you, Nick?’ he asks in bewilderment. ‘Why would you think I left? I just brought Gemma and her fiancée to Manchester Airport. They are going back to Los Angeles. For good! Oh, silly sausage, did you think I was going with them? No, no, no, my home is here, with you.’ They kiss.

‘Anyway its good you are home. This came for you,’ Harry says holding up a letter. It’s a formal one from the BBC Manchester. Nick opens it in rush. When he skims it, he sees that it is invitation to a job interview, he is pretty sure he never applied too. But when he sees Har-ry’s face, he knows he had something to do with it. So, that what he needed Nicks resume for. ‘Louis helped me!’ he giggles.  
‘I bet he did. I just hoped you didn’t tell too many lies in it.’  
‘We never do that.’

Nick must tell Harry about the van. He will but just not now. Nick pulls him down on the sofa and kisses him again. And then, just as Nick is about to tell Harry about his strange dream, his fingers come in contact with something lying on the seat of the sofa. His voice freezes. He doesn’t even need to pick the thing up, for he knows what it is, a heart shaped bottle of per-fume.

Then his eyes fall on an a stack of neatly folded newspapers next to the fireplace. Harry uses them to start the fire in it. Nick has no idea where he gets the papers from as they read there newspapers usually online. It’s the picture on the top one that draws him in. And he goes over to the stack and picks the top one up and unfolds it to read the story underneath the picture.

The London Telegraph 01-02- 1982 

From one of our reporters

London, Thursday

Labourers busy with construction work on a house in Whitechapel in London, have done a gruesome discovery. They found an almost completely decayed corpse between a wooden floor it had been wrapped in an old rug and a green garden hose. A spokesperson for Scotland Yard thinks that there might by foul play, as it must have laid in the abandoned and derelict building for quite some time. The remains have been taken away for examination, autopsy has to determine its skin colour, if it’s male or female and if DNA can be distracted.

 

When he takes a closer look at the picture of the corpse he notices the clothes it was wearing. He gasps in disbelieve. It’s the same suit Colin was wearing, he is certain. Does that mean they still don’t know who he is? He grabs his IPad and starts looking. 

Harry asks him what he is doing for he ought to get ready for the party. ‘You really need to get a move on. You still haven’t changed.  
‘Sorry love will do that in a minute. First I have to check something.’  
‘Oh, alright, just don’t take too long.’

He finds a story in the online archive of the local paper of 2010 about the still missing Colin Stuart, the son of old Mrs. Stuart. He left the village in the late 60s for London and has never been heard of since. It even has a picture of him which Nick recognizes in an instant. Those eyes, smile and blond curls. Yes that is Colin, alright. But that can’t be? Can it? The perfume bottle? And now this? But yes that is the boy who helped him this afternoon.

Before he really knows what he is doing he is sending an email to the reporter mentioned in the article, with the hastily scanned article of the London Telegraph attached. He asks him if the body can be the same. And if so, is there a way to bring the remains back home to Church Hulme to be buried in the graveyard of St. Lukes? He doesn’t think he will get a reply any time soon. But….

After he has had a quick shower, is dressed for the party and is doing his quiff, when his email notification on his mobile goes off. Intrigued who has send him an email, he sees it’s from the reporter. And it appears he already has been busy. The man says that he has contacted the coroner’s office responsible and since he knows details about Colin (he had distinctive piercings and tattoos) he can say with some certainty that indeed he is the son of Mrs. Stuart. Nobody had made the connection since Mrs. Stuart never knew where he went. London should have been an option but he also could have gone to Glasgow or overseas. And for this mummified body it was just this one article. It was not a big story in the National newspapers, buried on one of their last pages. 

‘Sorry, love, still have one more errand to run’  
‘Really what is it with you today?’  
‘This is really the last one, I promise. You just go ahead to the party, I will catch you up.’

Ten minutes later and Nick sits in the front room of Mrs. Stuart. The old woman is so glad he came. Even if the news is so sad. She sits there with glowing cheeks. ‘You are such a sweet boy, coming all this way to tell me what happened to my Colin, and on your way to the party. You must not keep Harry waiting. You know I have always wondered about Colin. You would have liked him. He loved to party too, perhaps a little too much, I fear.’ 

Another half an hour later and Nick has finally arrived at the Christmas Party and is surround-ed by his friends and loved ones. Louis might have brought some left over groceries from the store. He might even look guilty. But Nick tells he isn’t fired anymore. ‘Report the day after Christmas. We need to make some changes.’  
‘Don’t you have a job interview?’  
‘Oh, you know about that, had something to do with it perhaps? It might not lead anywhere, you know. But either way Church Hulme still needs a shop. Even if it might mean it will have a new owner.’

When he hears one of the little bells on the Christmas tree, he’s standing next to, he thinks of a remark Niall made some years ago about how every time you hear a bell on a Christmas tree an angel gets his wings. Nick thinks that it must be Colin then, getting his. He really deserves it.

❄ ❄ ❄ 

The angel stands in front of the radio station looking through the window. He sees the people in the building and hears their laughter. He sees Nick and Harry and how happy they are to-gether and is proud he got them there.  
‘I say, you have earned your wings. Don’t you?’ remarks his supervisor standing next to him.  
‘But I didn’t do anything, not really anyway! And Nick, I owe him so much, he found out who I was and put my mothers’ worries about me to rest and I can now finally come home.’  
'Yeah, that he did!’

 

THE END


End file.
